60th Anniversary of the 200″ telescope January 26, 2009

On January 26, 1949, sixty years ago today, the 200-inch Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory finally saw first light. The effort to build the 200-inch telescope, then the world’s largest, began twenty one years earlier in 1928 when George Ellery Hale received a six million dollar grant for the project. The telescope’s design, construction and final calibration phases spanned the Great Depression and World War II.